Web search API
A web search API is a programmatic interface that takes a query and returns web search results as structured data, such as URLs, titles, snippets and dates, so that applications and AI agents can use live web content. Some web search APIs query their own index, and others pass the query to another search engine. Agents call a web search API as a tool, often many times per task.
Google and Yahoo offered web search APIs in the 2000s, and Microsoft retired its Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025. Newer APIs built for AI agents compete on result quality, latency and price per call (see Keenable Search API pricing).
Example
An agent sends the query “EU AI Act enforcement date” to a web search API and gets back ten results, each with a URL, a title, a published date and a snippet. It reads the snippets and fetches only the one page it needs to quote.
How it works in NEEDLE
NEEDLE compares more than 20 web search APIs under one protocol: the same query text, one call at a time, and scores based only on the returned rankings, titles and snippets, without fetching pages. See the live NEEDLE results.
FAQ
What is the difference between a web search API and a SERP API?
A web search API is a search provider’s own interface: it answers from the provider’s index or passes the query to another engine. A SERP API fetches a public search results page, such as Google’s, and converts it into structured data.
Why do AI agents need a web search API?
AI agents need a web search API because a language model’s training data stops at a cutoff date. The API gives the agent current pages and sources it can cite.
Related terms
Written by Keenable.
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